by Brown, TW
There was a third blast much smaller than the first or second. By now, smoke was pouring into Heather’s room. Heather peered out from under the bed. The bars that had covered the window on the outside were now a twisted mess, but there was no way she could hope to escape in that direction without being roasted.
Turning, she had to do a double take. The door to her room was gone; not merely open, but missing entirely. Moving to the opening, Heather peered out into the hallway and was not surprised to discover that it was empty. Moving cautiously, she rounded a corner and saw a door that led to the outside at the far end.
Reaching the door, she could look outside. What she saw had her literally scratching her head in confusion.
The compound—at least what she could see of it—was empty of any human activity. She had expected to see some sort of security force scurrying about in response to the explosions. Giving the door a push, she was mildly surprised to discover that it opened.
The air was thick with the smell of burning. The acridness of burnt wood mingled with the chemical stink of melting plastic stung the back of her throat.
Looking around, Heather suddenly realized that she had no idea where to go. She could not go the way she had seen Catie disappear; there was a raging inferno that direction. Her only choice was to head across the compound and hope that she did not get shot as an intruder or blamed for what Catie had done.
She needed to find Aleah and Kevin. She wanted to run. Picking one of the buildings at random, Heather headed across the open compound. She had just reached the doors when a group of armor clad individuals sprinted past; a variety of rifles in hand.
“That can’t be good,” she sighed as she opened the door to a long corridor that was thick with the stench of human sweat, urine, and excrement.
8
Muddy Waters
“We got big trouble!” BP yelled up at us as my group poured out onto the landing. He fired another burst and then dove behind one of the checkout aisles just as a torrent of return fire shattered what little remaining glass jutted from the entry doors as well as chewing up and pulverizing the Linoleum floor.
I spun to the young man who we had as our prisoner. He cowered as I advanced, and I felt a sick feeling grow in my stomach. I hated what I was probably going to have to do in the next few moments.
Reaching out with one hand—I only briefly noted that it was still stained with blood—I grabbed the guy by his throat and slammed him into the nearest wall. Leaning in close, I could actually smell the stench of his fear; he had just messed his pants.
“Who are you people, how many are there, and why are you attacking us?” I snarled.
His mouth moved, opening and closing like a fish pulled from the river. His eyes were wide and I saw tears spring to them.
“My dad…” he gasped, “…I just wanted to be with my dad.”
“You and just about anybody else still alive. Now I am only going to ask you one more time. Then…” I yanked my huge knife from its sheath, the blade still sticky with darkness, “…I am going to start peeling you until you tell me what I want to know.”
“Billy!” I heard Katrina cry. I also heard what sounded like a struggle taking place behind me. She had probably tried to step up and interfere. Obviously somebody else in my group understood that the old rules were simply not applicable any longer. To survive in this world, you had to be able to throw a switch and shut a part of yourself off when it was necessary.
I stared at this guy’s face. He was probably close to my age; maybe a year or two older. He and I might have been friends under any other circumstance. I leaned in a bit closer and said just loud enough that only he could hear me. Despite the fact that I had accepted what I must become at the moment, that did not mean I wanted everybody to hear the terrible things I was saying.
“I will start by cutting off your balls.” I brought my knife down and covertly flipped it so that the sharp side was down before bringing it up between his legs.
“Our group is made up of six or seven different military units. The majority of us were in Pocatello, Idaho. That was where my dad’s unit was sent when this started. When the town fell, we retreated to Boise. That was when we found the airbase. They were in communication with several other groups. Army, Marines, Special Forces, even some National Guard units.
“A group of Marines came on line one day and it sounded like they were in big trouble. They were on the run from a herd being led by some biker gang. At least that is what they said. My dad was on radio duty that night and told them where we were located. He told them that if they could reach us, we could repel whatever was coming. Only, when the Marines arrived…”
The guy’s voice trailed off. I could tell that he was reliving whatever hell had taken place. Unfortunately, I did not have time for him to sift through his feelings. The sounds of gunfire had died down to the occasional burst, but it sounded like our guys were returning fire with diminished frequency. Despite what the movies portray, a person can only carry so much ammunition. Once it is gone, you are screwed. I gave a little bit of upward pressure with my knife hand and the words resumed pouring out.
“There were too many…the zombies were like a tidal wave, flattening our perimeter fence. We had never seen anything like it before. We sent messages out to everybody that we were in contact with that our base was being overrun and that it looked like people were using zombies as part of their attack.
“Once the herd pushed through the gates and did away with any remaining personnel, it was a simple matter for raiders to come in after the place was clear and loot whatever was left. During the evac, I lost my dad. We got separated when his truck hit something. He had insisted that we be in separate vehicles if the need to evacuate ever came.
“The group that I was with made a run for the closest military unit we knew of from our radio contacts. When we got there, it was a mess. Nobody was in charge, they had…acquired some civilian females and were treating them terribly. One of the men in our truck, a guy named Saunders—”
“Wait!” I snapped, unable to believe that my suspicion could be correct. “Jon Saunders?”
“Uhh…yeah…you know him?”
“I do, and skip the rest of your story for now. Is this group that is trying to invade us friends of Jon’s?” The kid’s eyes dropped. That was answer enough. “Just tell me how many and what you guys are packing.”
“Our strength is one hundred and seven.”
That didn’t seem too bad. So obviously their success was based on the weapons that they were using. There was a momentary pause in the shooting that seemed ominous as silence flooded in to replace the cacophony that had my ears ringing.
“And what the hell kind of firepower are you guys packing?” I needed that answer most of all. He opened his mouth when a new batch of gunfire erupted.
I had all but forgotten about Darla and her group up on the roof. There was a loud “WHUMP” and another explosion. Debris and smoke poured in through the shattered entrance doors. I waited for the large caliber machine guns to resume, but there was nothing. Shoving my prisoner away, I moved along the wall and descended the cement stairs. Each step was taken with caution as I continued to wait for the shooting to begin with sudden and deadly ferocity.
“Billy!” I heard a voice calling down from outside. It was Darla; that was the sweetest thing I could imagine at the moment.
Disregarding my earlier caution, I dashed out, hearing others coming up behind me in my wake. As I reached the decimated sally-port of the Walmart and peered out to the parking lot, I saw what had once been some sort of giant pushcart lying on its side with the twisted remains of one big ass gun mounted on it. In a crude semi-circle around the now defunct weapon were at least a dozen bodies—or parts in some cases—scattered on the ground. Most were still smoldering. The concrete had been turned black in a huge, uneven splotch centered on the pushcart.
I moved away from the building’s façade and looked up to see Darla and he
r group standing along the lip of the roof. Darla held up what looked like a burlap book bag.
“Homemade satchel charges,” she called down. “Can you believe that?”
Since I didn’t really know what a satchel charge was, much less a homemade one, I gave a smile, a shrug, and a wave. Groans from behind me forced me to turn back around and view the carnage spread out before me.
A few of the bodies on the ground were twitching or crawling, and I began making short work of them. I noticed BP and a few others join in, but Katrina was standing with her arms across her chest in obvious disapproval. I paused beside her and saw a very clear look of condemnation etched on her face.
“You have a problem with this?” I asked after stabbing the body at my feet in the back of the head.
“So we are murderers now?” she shot back.
“We are ending their misery,” I replied. “I realize that it seems cruel, but letting them suffer would be far worse. And before you even say it, do you know how difficult it is to treat burn victims? Even back before this nightmare began, burns were harsh. We have neither the facilities nor the supplies to do anything for these people. The best we can offer is a quick death.”
“Sounds like things have settled down!” Darla called from above, breaking the uncomfortable stare down between me and Katrina.
I gave a wave of acknowledgement and returned to the gruesome task at hand. Once it was finished, everybody gathered together out in the parking lot. I sent in a couple of our group to remain with the people in the makeshift hospital until proper help arrived. I instructed Darla to remain up on the roof.
“What do we do now?” somebody asked.
“We hold this location and wait.” As far as I was concerned, we had done our share of the work when it came to repelling the attack. We even had a prisoner to show for it.
That got me to thinking. Once Graham or whoever was still in charge after this ordeal was sorted out arrived, I might never see this guy again. He had some information that I wanted, and this could very well be my only opportunity to question him.
“Everybody take defensive positions just in case,” I said, turning back to the entrance of the Walmart. “Give me a holler if somebody shows up…no matter what side they are on.”
Returning to the manager’s office where I had left our prisoner, I entered and asked the person who had remained as a guard to please excuse us. He left and I took a seat, nodding that my prisoner should do the same.
“So…what’s your name?” I asked.
“Gable…Gable Matczak,” he answered as he slumped down into the chair on the other side of the desk from me.
“Okay, Gable, let’s start from the beginning. You say that your group arrived at a military base, and that a Marine named Jon Saunders was with you. You arrived to find things in a bad way, and Jon did what exactly?”
“He asked to talk to the officer in charge,” Gable replied. “When this man came out, Jon asked him what in the hell was going on here. He demanded to know why civilians were being abused. The officer and Jon started arguing and it turned into a fight. Pretty soon, people were shooting at each other. All of a sudden, one guy comes out of a building, I was underneath our truck, but I saw that he was carrying a freaking flamethrower. I figured that Jon was a goner, but the guy spun on his own people and lit them up good.”
That had to be Jesus Sanchez, I thought, remembering his arrival to our compound with Jon and Jake. I had really liked that guy. Hell, I’d looked up to and liked them all at one point.
“The battle went on for quite a while, and when things died down, I was too scared to move. I had no idea which side had won. Eventually, I saw one of the men who had ridden with us when we escaped our old command post. I assumed that Jon managed to find some support in this new post besides the guy with the flamethrower and somehow managed to take down the bad guys.”
Gable stopped, and I saw tears well up in his eyes. It did not take a genius or a mind reader to know that he had been incorrect in that assumption. I decided that I did not need to force the story from him, Gable would speak on his own time and I could perhaps free my conscience of some of the guilt it was holding on to for the way that I treated him just a few brief moments ago.
“Two of the men that rode in my truck had turned and decided to join that gang of animals. I was stuck with no choice but to go along.”
I leaned back in my chair and raised my eyebrows at him. I think he just realized what he’d said, because his face flushed and he fumbled over his words trying to explain himself.
“No….wait…I didn’t…what I meant was—”
“You meant that you had to travel with these guys because you had no other choice,” I offered his explanation and he nodded vigorously.
“I kept hoping that we would find my dad,” Gable said glumly. “I knew that if we found him, I could get away from those bastards. But I also knew that going out on my own would be a good way to get myself killed.
“They just threw all the bodies in a pile and torched it. Didn’t matter if they were soldier or civilian, they treated ‘em all no better than you would one of those walking corpses. I fell in and just did what I was told. When there were raids on nearby camps, I went if they made me, but I swear…I never laid a hand on anybody in that way. I felt like garbage for not doing anything to stop it, but I was all by myself and knew they would either kill me or make me a part of their sick and twisted entertainment.”
I heard an awful lot in that last sentence. I had seen my share of sick and twisted, but I was pretty sure that there was plenty I had missed. It sounded like poor Gable had seen far more…and far worse.
“One day, our camp got hit by one of those herds. I knew it was just a matter of time. The way they carried on and didn’t seem to give a damn about how much noise they made, I knew that the zombies would find us sooner than later. We lost probably two dozen of our numbers that night. We were too drunk to run after just finding an almost perfectly intact liquor store. There had been serious drinking and most of the people they’d been keeping as prisoners were fortunate since they ended up dying before the herd arrived. Still, we became more of a roaming terror squad after that.
“Then we met this other group of soldiers. One of them was this guy named Winters. If the folks I’d been with were scary and mean, they had nothing on Winters. That guy was a walking nightmare.”
I felt my blood run cold. Something told me that a lot of things were about to fall into place. The bad part was that I was not sure if that was something I wanted or not. Gable saw my expression change and he swallowed hard.
“You knew Winters, too?” he asked incredulously. I nodded, and he continued his tale. “He killed our leader and took charge, establishing a chain of command. It was really crazy those first few days. Winters had quite a few females with him, but they weren’t prisoners. And if I had thought that the men I’d been travelling with were a nasty bunch…” He shook his head and looked at me with a haunted expression. “Those women were some of the most vicious, terrible…” He shuddered and rubbed at his arms as if to try and ward off the cold. “God, I don’t even want to call them humans. They were horrible.”
“So I still don’t know how you guys ended up out here,” I said.
What I wasn’t saying was that I also did not know how the group that Gable travelled with had gotten separated from Winters. I had thought we eliminated all of his evil minions a while ago when Jon, Jake and I had been in their compound and employed the New World Era version of a bio-weapon. That was also when both men had contaminated Winters’ compound’s water supply with their infected blood.
“Winters got word from one of our patrols of a well-organized group of survivors up in the mountains.”
Ah, I thought, that would have been us.
“But they also discovered another military outpost via radio. These guys were only a few in number, but they were protecting a massive cache of supplies. Winters convinced them that we could hel
p. He knew all the right codes and so they had no reason to suspect that he was some sort of monster worse than the damn zombies.
“I was sent with that group. We showed up to this massive underground bunker. It was loaded with everything. I still don’t know why we didn’t all just decide that it was good enough to call home. It was in some sort of mountainous region with no nearby towns. There was nothing for miles and practically zero threat from zombies. And even if a herd came by, we could simply slip below ground and wait them out.
“I think they had just become too addicted to the power they could wield over people unfortunate enough to cross their path. We actually had started talking about making the place a permanent home and saying to hell with Winters and the rest, but it wasn’t even a month before the fighting began. They all acted like smokers who had been forced to quit. Basically mean, nasty, and foul-tempered to the point where the simplest things would set somebody off. Hell, at least ten people ended up dead from one fight or another.
“We loaded up everything we could transport with the various contraptions that were concocted and set out to return to La Grande where Winters had told us all to meet. He had mentioned that there was another settlement supposedly in town that had gone a good way towards establishing a sustainable living area complete with farmland and even a possible National Guard armory close by.
“We got bogged down when the snow came and decided to hold up in a small town.” Gable shuddered and I had a feeling that there had been survivors in whatever small town his group had chosen to call home until the passes were clear. He looked up at me, and I could see something in his eyes that told me more than his words ever could or would.
“We actually found that compound that Winters spoke of as we came through the mountain pass a few weeks ago, but it was empty. Whoever had been there, they sure busted their asses to get it in proper order. I felt bad that those poor people fell to somebody like Winters and his evil band of degenerates. They had a freakin’ moat around a massive log cabin that sat up on a hill. There was a healthy stream nearby and plenty of open land that could have been farmed. Not to mention they were back from the road far enough that nobody would ever find them unless they were looking for them.”